Sermons

Happy Joyous 3rd Sunday of Advent! I am honored to be with you all this glorious day. I know most of you, but some might be new faces. My name is Christina Rose Cernansky. I am in my second year of seminary and halfway through being a postulant candidate for Holy Orders to Priesthood in the Diocese of Idaho.  I attend an online school, Bexley-Seabury, based in Chicago. I hail from the East Coast, grew up Lutheran and Catholic, and have been a devoted Episicaplian since moving to Idaho over 9 years ago! I am with you all until I graduate in about a year & a half, and I am truly blessed to be with you all as I continue to be shaped & formed in this process.

In today’s readings, we hear a theme… Let Joy ring forth as we invite the Holy Spirit to share its love and light in our hearts and minds. As we get closer and closer to the darkest night of the year, we gather during the Advent season to be reminded of how to find joy by living in the moment and to reflect on how to come closer to God and repent. We collectively look to honor the past year and learn how to find joy as we prepare in the community for Christ’s birth.

There is a common narrative for all this joy in today’s texts: the absence of fear. In that, Joy results from the removal of fear in our lives. When we don’t live in fear, we tend to live a joyful existence. Can you think of a time when you lived in fear? Possibly fear of financial insecurity, fear of being late, fear of well….that unknown? Can you think of a time when we were so worried about an unknown outcome….how joyful was that experience? 

When we live in God’s grace & love and turn our lives over to the care of God, we find comfort in knowing we are living in God’s will. Granted, this is easier said than done, right? When try to rid our lives of ffear,  we can find comfort in the sunlight of the spirit’s love rather than the fear of the unknown.

Fear is lifted up in Luke’s Gospel today in the word “repent.” Now, I did some digging here. The word is  a verb & an adjective, an action word.

John the Baptist taught about repentance and reformation of life. He lays it on pretty thick: You brood of vipers, you hypocrites consuming too much, extorting, lying, cheating and stealing, and taking advantage of others. 

John the Baptist continues to say: “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you. “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

Repentance, what an interesting word. I thought to repent … was to openly share that we are sorry about something and honor that act with a public announcement. I repent, for I ran that red light. I repent for not giving food to my brother on the corner. I repent for not having patience with my family over Thanksgiving….

Lo and behold, there are two parts to repentance. 

I looked up the word “repent” in Greek and ran across Fr. Richard Rhor’s writing on the word. Do we have any Rochard Rhod fans in the house? I wanted to share his thoughts in repentance with you this morning: “First, it doesn’t mean to beat ourselves up or feel bad about ourselves. “Repent” (or metanoia in Greek) means turning around and changing. People unwilling to change are reluctant to turn away from themselves. (Meaning they’re unwilling to do the work, look within & change.)

He goes on to say, “What we’re in love with usually is not God. (maybe hes referring to the fake idols that separate us from the sunlight of the spirit that is so often talked about in the Bible.)

We’re in love with our way of thinking, our way of explaining, our way of doing. One of the greatest ways to protect ourselves from God and from truth and grace is simply to buy into some kind of cheap conventionalism and call it tradition.” I think Fr. Richard Rhor has made an interesting point.

What if, in Luke’s Gospel, sharing John the Baptist’s words tells us that to find true unbridled joy, we are being shown the roadmap to be willing to change habits that don’t serve us well that create distance between ourselves & our neighbors). This roadmap to “metanoia” isn’t necessarily too complicated. I reflected on habits that might be serving me too well, that block me from God’s presence.

If I can stop that endless scrolling on social media, I might be able to get in touch with my community. But I digress!

What about my stuck-in-the-mud attitude that might need to be relaxed? Thou shall not judge, right? Maybe I can have more open-minded viewpoints, I hear having a growth mindset is beneficial. Perhaps I can further understand where our brothers & sisters are coming from. Perhaps I can slow down to listen more, to be more present, I bet the grocery clerk would appreciate some words of kindness.

To repent is to find happiness & peace in your soul and feel empowered to change to be better disciples of Christ’s message.

In my first semester of seminary, I took a deep dive into thinking of what Jesus was asking of his disciples…rather, wthan hat it means to be a disciple. How does he ask us to show up using this roadmap? Jesus invited a handful of people to join him, to learn & grow within their community with one another. This motley crew of disciples probably wouldn’t have spent that much time together otherwise, but that was Jesus’ intent. To learn, grow, and teach one another….only then, after all this shaping & forming, did he ask them to go out and spread the good word. 

I want to be willing to learn and grow from this community to help support God’s will for all of God’s children. I want to be empowered and feel empowered to help support a beloved community and, if need be, be willing to repent, to be willing to change, to lean into God’s will, lean into Christ’s love, to be happy, joyous and free with my time here walking this beautiful journey we call life.

Our Baptismal Covenant encourages us to “Repent and return to the Lord.” It is a roadmap of change, too. Our baptism is both individual and communal. Might the “metanoia” (repent) also be a baptismal for a happy, joyous & free life? Let us also remember we commit to the baptismal covenant by asking for God’s help. 

I’ll leave you with this last thought…On this third Sunday of Advent, let’s sing for JOY, repent, and be glad in it to live out God’s Kingdom of love, compassion, and understanding. How might we want to repent to live free of the chains that hold us back from the sunlight of the spirit? How can we lean into God’s graces and drop those habits that might not serve us well? How can we continue to show unconditional love in our communities….with, of course, humbly asking for God’s help to God’s love?

Christina Cernansky

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Advent 1C

“Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

During the season of Advent, we listen more attentively to the words of the prophets. We listen to prophets and sages calling out in the wilderness. Those prophets and sages call out for us to turn from our ways and turn toward God, to prepare for upheaval that ultimately ushers in the fullness of the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.

Of course it’s uncomfortable. The prophets have never been comfortable people. The prophets have always been distressing, frustrating, weird, unsettling. In the book of Samuel, a band of prophets are described as being in a “prophetic frenzy” (1 Sam 10:10). The prophets spoke truth to powerful people, calling out hypocrisy, injustice, nationalism, and greed – and so the powerful people would accuse the prophets of undermining the social order and being foreign agents or instigators of chaos. And even John the Baptist, who gets to show up this Advent as this voice crying out in the wilderness, he is clothed with camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey; not a comfortable, socially acceptable prophet, is he?

And we human beings despise what is uncomfortable. We don’t like being unsettled. We want to make it go away. It’s a very powerful psychological phenomenon. If we’re confronted with facts that cast doubt on what we believe, we double-down on our belief. If we’re called out for harmful behavior, we double-down on our justification. If what keeps us comfortable is taken away, we double-down on our demand for everything to be kept just the way it is.

So, when we hear the words of the prophets, we double-down, too.

First, we might double-down on making the prophets just future-telling mystics. The prophets are reduced to people who see the future, and the future for some reason is disconnected from the present moment. In this view, the prophets just forecast the coming of Jesus, and then we’re supposed to just wait around for something else to happen. The prophets calling for justice for the poor? Nah, just wait for Jesus to make it happen.

Second, we might double-down on our own prophetic identity. I’ve seen this, too, where folks take on the mantle of being a prophet to call out injustice in the world, but somehow our own repentance gets lost in the mix. We forget our own fallibility. We get excited by being this critic of the status quo, and we find ourselves scrambling to always stay one step ahead of the next prophet who will call us out for our own behavior, to always stay on the correct side of the movement.

And we double-down on this image that the prophet will always be palatable to us, that the prophet will never drag out the idols we’ve been worshipping and dash them into pieces. I think of the prophetic voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, he led marches and nonviolent civil disobedience to push the US toward racial justice and reconciliation. But remember that wasn’t the only thing he talked about. When he started to preach about economic justice and was taking a stand with workers on strike for living wages and better working conditions, now he’s questioning the sacred idol of the American Capitalist Economy. And when he started preaching about the need for peace in Vietnam, that the rights of the Vietnamese people must be respected, that brotherhood was better than bombs, ah, well, now he’s questioning the sacred idol of American Military Interventionism, so he must be a Communist agent for the Soviets and Maoists. See how they slander the prophets once the idols are revealed!

The prophets are an uncomfortable people. We must be ready to listen – if we are asked an uncomfortable question, given a distressing fact, how will we handle it? Will we double-down to protect our status quo, or will we let that discomfort open us up to a possibility more complex, more truthful than what we currently believe?

We must listen to what the prophets preach if we want what the prophets promise. The prophets preach repentance to us that we may turn our ways around, that we may be set free from the status quo. They preach repentance that we may find the way of salvation that God promises us.

The scribe Baruch promises us that God will bring us home from our exile. That though we have been exiled for how we have harmed one another and distorted God’s good creation, God is not satisfied until we are brought home. Will we let God take us home, or will we dig our claws into the pain of exile with a refusal to change?

The prophet John the Baptist promises that the salvation of God will be seen by all, that hills will be made low and valleys lifted up, to bring equity and equality to a world bent out of shape. Will we follow John out into the waters to be baptized with waters of repentance and to open our eyes for our Messiah, Jesus?

Will we heed the prophets and find new life, will we listen to the prophets and be part of the Kingdom of God, the reign of God? Or would we rather not change at all?

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Advent 1C

Waiting is not a thing any of us enjoy. None of us are good at waiting. Waiting, waiting … when we wait, we are in an in-between time. We’re waiting for something that isn’t here yet. And while we’re waiting, it is hard to be in the moment now. While we wait, all of our emotions and thoughts bubble up. What-ifs, memories, frustrations, and fears bubble up from the depths. When we are waiting, we try to distract ourselves to make the time pass by faster, but it still drags on.

          If we’re in a waiting room at the doctor’s office, we sit and scroll on our phones, peruse outdated magazines, wondering what news will greet us. We might be worried we’ll get a diagnosis with a poor prognosis, or perhaps we’re worried about someone we love hearing that bad news. We might also be waiting, HOPING for a diagnosis that can explain what we’re enduring.

          And as we wait, we are split – our brains live in a future of “what-ifs”, things that could happen, what the future might be, yet our bodies live in the present. There are chores to get done at home, messages to respond to, errands to run. Our minds are in the anxious future, and our bodies are in the uncertain present. Not fully in the present, and the future is not yet here.

          Year after year, there is the admonition to learn how to wait during Advent. We’re invited to slow down, we’re told. Slow down, enjoy the moment, live in hopeful expectation of Christmas. Most years, it’s an attempt to draw our attention to Advent’s themes of hope and longing for God in the midst of a consumerist swirl of the holiday season. The world around us has been decorating for Christmas for weeks by now, and our email inboxes have been inundated with “Black Friday” sales since the beginning of November. Why suffer through waiting, when festive celebration can be had now? We decorate, we sing, we watch the holiday classics.

          But the mean ol’ church and the mean ol’ priest make us do this Advent thing. The readings from the prophets and the apocalyptic messages that start off Advent slap down the festivity. Sure, we’ll eventually move toward readings that lead us up to Christmas, but Advent is not just about waiting for Christmas; it’s about waiting for Jesus’ return.

          Note that when I say we’re waiting for Christmas, we’re not waiting for the birth of Jesus; Jesus has already been born, 2024ish years ago in a city called Bethlehem. We’re waiting for the celebration we call Christmas, and in our worship, we’re waiting for Jesus to come back, to set things right.

          Because things aren’t right. We live in a world where people suffer and die. We live in a world where war, violence, hatred, greed, exploitation, and oppression exist. We live in a world where people can’t afford a Thanksgiving meal and rely on strangers to feed them. We live in a world where power is valued above justice and mercy.

          And Advent brings us to see all these things. Advent makes us wait. Advent makes us look around us with God’s eyes, to see the pain of the world. Advent makes us listen with God’s ears, to hear the groans and cries of a creation begging for healing and hope. Advent makes us wait. Instead of an abundance of festive lights, Advent lights a candle in the midst of the darkness. Advent asks us to look into the darkness of the world around us, to see what so easily goes unseen in the rush of life. Advent asks us to behold all the reasons why God took our human flesh and was born human in Jesus. Look at the world, and let your heart open to the pain and suffering of the world, let your heart open up like God’s heart.

          We don’t instinctually do this, of course. We don’t want to see pain because our empathy makes us feel pain, too. The pain of the world seems so impossibly large, and our hearts seem so small they might disintegrate from the pain. This whole universe that God loved into being, this whole universe groans and cries out for its mother who gave birth to it.

          And we are part of that universe. We, too, groan and cry out to God, our mother, to hold us, to love us, to tell us that it will all be ok.

          We long to have God with us in this waiting room. We want God to hold us in our pain and fear. We want God to hold our hands and bring us back to the present moment when our minds wander anxiously in imagined futures. We want God to give us strength to stand when the doctor comes out to the waiting room to give us the news.

          And we want God to bring us news, the Good News.

          Good News that, no matter what happens now, the good we do today will bear good fruit and the little light we hold will shine in the darkness to give hope to all who need it.

Good News that, no matter what suffering might be ahead, God’s love endures forever.

Good News that, no matter how messed up things may be or how terrible they may become, Jesus Christ will and already is reconciling and healing and restoring what is broken.

Good News that, no matter what, the Word of God’s love is the everlasting Word that shall make all things a new creation.           This Advent, we wait. We wait. We do not know how long we shall wait. We wait, eyes open to the darkness, with flickering and unquenchable light. We wait, holding the hand of God, holding the hand of our neighbor. We wait, and we have hope. Amen.

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Christ the King, Year B

“My kingdom is not from this world.”

Standing in front of Pilate, the governor, the emissary of the Emperor of Rome, Jesus stands a start contrast. Jesus is not surrounded by a battalion of loyal soldiers ready to subdue his enemies. Jesus is not swarmed by court officials wanting to curry favor with him. Jesus is not a king wearing glorious robes, or an oligarch with wealth beyond compare. Jesus is not aided and abetted by astute politicians and lobbyists who can get their way if they just bend Jesus’s ear.

In the Passion narrative as we would normally meditate on the holy significance of Christ’s death on the cross, we often miss this moment of confrontation. By simply standing there in the fullness of his person, Jesus is lifting up a mirror to Pilate. Pilate is toe-to-toe with this itinerant Jewish rabbi, a carpenter’s son, a preacher and healer and prophet whose words and deeds have upended this little backwater province that the Roman Empire had conquered. Pilate has legions of soldiers ready to strike down his opposition, anyone who upsets the “Peace of Rome.” Pilate has titles and power and honor. But, in the presence of Jesus Christ, all of that seems to recede into the background. The cosmos shrinks down to these two.

Pilate keeps clinging to the earthly models of power. He has the power. He has the authority. He has the say on whether this backwater bumpkin lives or dies.

But in the presence of Christ, those things seem to get stripped away. Pilate keeps grasping at them, but Pilate is only human. Just a human being. Only a human being. All that power and authority is not even his – delegated, for a time, as long as others grant him the power. Pilate, the powerful governor, is still only flesh and blood. The whole imperial order is upended once you recognize that it’s only a bunch of human beings vying for power, wealth, and control. It would be a laughable farce, if it didn’t have deadly consequences. Those who climb the ladder may find their aspirations ended at the sharp end of a dagger – and those crushed at the bottom too often fantasize about climbing the ladder themselves instead of getting rid of the thing!

Christ the King is not robed in majesty and glory in emulation of emperors and senators and governors. What need does the Alpha and the Omega have of custom-made suits, gold, silk and crowns? Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word made flesh, the Son of God and God the Son, through whom all things were made, what need does he have of earthly forms of power?

And, almost as important, why would anyone who claims to follow Christ lust after power like Pilate? Why would Peter, James, John, Mary Magdalene, Martha, why would any of them clamor for robes like the emperor’s, covet a crown like a medieval king, fantasize about getting their way imposed on others at the end of a sword or a gun?

Ever since the Roman Emperor Constantine had his “conversion” experience, we Christians have been befuddled on what to do with power. As Christianity suddenly went from persecuted minority to tolerated communities to the Religion of the Empire, we Christians have been split apart on what to do. Some bishops like John Chrysostom and Gregory were quick to call out the rich and powerful for ignoring the needs of the people, and Gregory sold off lands the Roman Church had acquired in order to feed the poor and refugees who had come to Rome in the midst of wars and upheaval – Gregory did not wait for the new imperial court at Byzantium to do anything because he saw the need in front of him. Other bishops, however, were happy to wear their robes and take up disputations in the new imperial court at Byzantium to gain favor with the Emperor – they knew on what side their bread would be buttered. For much of European history, bishops were often sitting at the king’s right hand – close to power. Still today, the bishops of the Church of England are formally appointed by the crown. The next Archbishop of Canterbury will be decided by King Charles III.

In the Protestant Reformation, the relationship between Christianity and politics exploded. In Geneva, Switzerland, John Calvin and the Reformed tradition established theocratic governance – the church elders were also the political leaders of the town. This model would be replicated in the early Massachusetts Bay colony; the Puritans and pilgrims wanted their government free of any religion but their own, and so their church elders were in charge. Their new colony in North America was to be a shining city on a hill – free of anything that didn’t accord with their theology. Fun fact: the Congregationalist Church that the pilgrims founded was the official church of Massachusetts until 1833. This view that Christianity must be commingled with politics and morality must be legislated for all is a recurring theme in America, it seems.

German Protestant reformer Martin Luther in the 1500s advocated a different view of Christian politics. He leaned more strongly on the idea that church should just be focused on spiritual matters, and the state on earthly ones. It seems like a nice, neat tidy division between church and state, one that would meet with polite approval. But we recall that Martin Luther was aghast when German peasants began to revolt because of oppression at the hands of their lords – and Martin Luther told the peasants that they deserved to die for stepping out of line, and he would not raise a hand to stop the German lords from massacring them. In the 20th century, martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr, and Oscar Romero proved that the social-political order doesn’t get a free pass to do whatever it wants because it has earthly power, and that the church’s spiritual authority cannot be silent when people are harmed out of some desire to remain “polite” and “quiet” and “spiritual.”

So, then, what do we as Christians do? If we sit at the emperor’s right hand, we might lose the call to love and care for all as we sit in nice palaces. If we seize the power, then we will be corrupted and our holy vision will become a nightmare. And if we abdicate all power to the world, much harm can be done in the name of “law and order” – and our polite silence will condemn us.

So, what do we do? No concise political theology from me. I’m not a systematic thinker like that. But I see three things we must always hold onto: Truth, Humanity, and Love.

Truth: Jesus in his confrontation with Pilate proclaims that he was here to speak the truth. Our world needs it. And we need to be ready to hear it twice as deeply as we are to speak it. In the morass that is American politics, it is far too easy to dispense with truth in order to feel comfortable with our own vision of things, the way “our” side sees it. Be fearless for truth. And be discerning – we need to find the truth, not what we wish to be true. We must be ready to be prophets of God, speaking truth and listening always for God. Read the prophets of the Old Testament.

Humanity: Jesus in his confrontation with Pilate stands there as a human being with a human being. Jesus has taken on the fullness of our humanity, and here he is with Pilate, another human being. Could you be in a room with your enemy, and still see their humanity? I don’t mean be silent and pretend everything is all right – Jesus was deliberate in his words with Pilate, but not polite! And remember – Pilate had the power to harm Jesus, and that is exactly what Pilate did. An enemy might not recognize my humanity at all – but I will recognize their humanity, I will honor my own humanity, and this makes all the difference. Christ shares in our suffering and death, and we share in his resurrection.

Love: Of course that’s part of it. It has to be. Love is supposed to be something Christians are exemplars of, and yet that’s not been the case for centuries. As St Paul says, “If I do not have love, I am nothing.” As Jesus in the Gospel of John says: “Love one another as I have loved you.” As the other Gospels say: “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is absolutely part of it. If we are so naïve or cynical as to think that love is irrelevant to politics and economics and culture and all these earthly things, then why would we claim to follow Jesus Christ the Lord, the Savior – to use the words from the book of Revelation today, the one “who loves us and freed us from our sins with his blood”? Jesus Christ the King and Lord of all creation, Jesus Christ is Love. If we are to follow him, we must follow him completely with all our hearts and all our lives. Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world. It is divine – it is love – it is the Kingdom as creation was meant to be, is called to become, and will by his grace one day be. Amen.

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Proper 28B

Every week for our Wednesday Bible study we have some short prayers we say before and after. It helps us to settle in for Bible study, and to ask God to help us be attentive and listening as we study the Bible. Our collect of the day that began our Eucharist today, “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning,” is a part of our little Wednesday night Bible study liturgy. We’ve been praying it week after week, and now we’re praying it on Sunday!

Our little Bible study liturgy is an important practice, and I’m glad that we’ve adopted it. Bible study is more than satisfying our intellectual curiosity about the Bible. You’ve heard me say it time and time again that the Bible is not just some collection of facts about God that we figure out or memorize once and then toss away. We keep returning to the Bible because we keep listening for God to speak to us through the texts. We wrestle with them. We study some of the harder, less sweet passages of Scripture.

So our little prayer before and after reminds us that what we’re learning is not just intellectual curiosity; it’s about our spirituality and our experiences, too. We read Biblical passages again and again because the world and us have changed since we last looked at them. We read the Bible passages again and again because they’re a life-giving stream … yet so many Christians look at the Bible like a wet towel that once you’ve wrung out all the information from it, you can just hang it up to try and leave it behind.

This past year we had our Renewal Works program that gathered information from folks at All Saints and a committee gathered to review the survey results to help us in our spiritual vitality. Part of the main findings of the Renewal Works program nationally is that we should “embed the Bible in everything.” Now, this is an Episcopal program – though they’ve drawn data from a bunch of denominations, too. There’s a vitality that comes with bringing the Bible into our lives as a community again and again. It reminds us of our vocation, it calls us back to our foundations, it invites us to listen to the Holy Spirit of God speaking to us through the language of the Bible.

So the little liturgy for Bible study centers on the Psalms – specifically psalms that praise God for the gift of wisdom as shown in Scripture, and then ends with prayers. It’s a little liturgy that we take turns leading.

The Vestry, too, has a little liturgy for its monthly meeting. A little psalm, a canticle from the Gospel of Luke, and the passage from the Gospel of John where Jesus tell us to love one another as he has loved us. We pray with that passage of Scripture month after month because it’s so easy to get lost in budgets and numbers and decision-making, and we always need to be brought back to how we as a community of faith are called to love one another as Christ has loved us.

Or, if we want to pull up another passage of Scripture, how about toward the end of our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews: “let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.” Whereas John’s Gospel puts the love of community in the context of Jesus’s love for us, the writer of Hebrews puts it another way: community nudges us toward our better selves, and we cannot do it alone. We need encouragement and challenge to grow spiritually – and we need community.

A few weeks ago I shared a little present – some prayer cards for us as a parish. A little liturgy, an encounter with at least a meditation from Forward Movement. It wasn’t a one-time thing – it wasn’t a sermon prop for a day because I had nothing to say! We still have some extras – of the prayer cards and of the Forward Movement booklets. I wanted to help us share prayer as community – so even if we are apart, we are still praying together. And to help bring us back to the Scriptures – even if it’s just the little bit of Scripture mentioned in the daily meditation. Embed the Bible in your daily life, and embed the Bible in our community life.

And I envision a next step: committees picking pieces of Scripture that they can use to start their meetings. Small groups that gather to discuss the meditations, or a Bible study of their own – you don’t have to know everything about the Bible to read it and discuss it with others! We learn so much. We hear the Bible in our worship, we read it, we mark it up, we learn from it, and we inwardly digest it to make it part of ourselves – it’s spiritual nutrition, spiritual energy for our lives.

The Bible is a spiritual guide in our lives – we learn so much when we sit with it and listen to it.

We let it challenge us – what do we hear, and what do we *want* it to say instead? There are Christians who are quick to abandon their moral standards as soon as it becomes convenient for them or when the going gets rough – we don’t want to be like that!

We let the Bible comfort us – the pain and tragedy of human history is written in our Bible, too, and we listen to how countless people of faith before us have wrestled with pain and heard the responses of God in the midst of turmoil.

We even let the Bible confuse us – we wrestle with strange passages, conflicting verses, and we recall that our God is greater than all the words and pages that have been written.

The Bible is a guide in our lives of faith, and in our daily lives. We should return to the Bible day after day, curious to what God might speak to us through these human words handed down to us through the centuries.

May we hear the words, read them, mark them and inwardly digest them, to build health in our parish community, to build health in our own spiritual journeys, and to build greater health in the world around us through our own transformation and witness. Amen.